Hello everybody,
I picked up some Intermountain ES44AC's in CP colours today. When I had them home the packaging reminded me of that from Atlas. So proceeded to put them on the track and let them have a couple of laps around the layout for breaking them in.
Next I put on the track a Kato and a Atlas locomotive along with the Intermountain and they ran away from the Intermountain loco. The throttle has to be turned half way before the ES44AC would even move. This is not good for having MU freights. So took the Intermountain locomotive apart, the circuit board is from Soundtraxx, the rest of the locomotive looks like a cross between a Kato and Atlas.
Just as an experiment I took the motor leads and wired them directly to the leads from the axles. Now with the motor bypassing the circuit board the locomotive is a perfect speed match for my Kato's and Atlas engines. The speed is so closely matched that I am willing to use them as pushers up the helix with the Kato AC units, and this is in DC. So for anyone in DC this might be a viable solution to get these engines to speed match. Hope it helps.
frank
"If you need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm."
ANY loco that has sound and runs on DC will be like this. Otherwise the loco would be goign half speed before the sounds even turned on. Nothing you can do about it, other than remove the sound or go to DCC.
I hope you DISCONNECTED the motor wires from the Soundtraxx decoder and connected them to the track pickups and not just jumpered around them, or move the track pikcups to th motor terminals. If the track power is in any way getting to the motor outputs of the decoder, it's fried.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Hi,
thank you for your input Randy. I forgot to mention that my locomotives are the non sound versions. As for your suggestion, yes the motor wires from the Soundtraxx circuit board are disconnected and the motor leads are now directly connected to the pick up leads which also still feed the circuit board
Frank
And.. what about the headlights and ditch lights??
These lights need to be rewired too?? or won`t turn on anymore after rewiring??
Saludos
Esteban Tonatiuh
Tonatiuh And.. what about the headlights and ditch lights?? These lights need to be rewired too?? or won`t turn on anymore after rewiring?? Saludos Esteban Tonatiuh
The head lights and ditch lights will not come on until the loco is moving. If you like for them to come on sooner you would have to rewire that as well. If you get in touch with Intermountain, they have a special wiring harness now which solves the speed issue, not sure about the lights and as to when they come on. Give them a call, they are very helpful.
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Hi Tonatiuh,
The engines that I rewired will move before the lights come on. Unfortunately that is a price that I have to put up with if I want these locomotives the rest of my fleet. I am not aware what the harness from Intermountain looks like or how it interconnects the motor and the PC board. Basically you need power to both the motor and the PC board, BUT this PC board is the same type of board they use for the sound locomotives. That is why the starting voltage is so high for these locomotives, and the lights are coordinated with the motor so that the lights turn on first. When you rewire this there is no more coordination between the motor and the lights which is why the engine moves before the lights come on. The Kato and Atlas PC boards are different, these boards in the non sound locomotives are meant to coordinate the motor with the lights.
I would not connect the LED's directly to the DC. LED's are meant to operate in a voltage range from 1.8V to 3.3V, if connected directly to DC they would burn out. If you wish to make the lights brighter, then you have to go to this web site http://www.railfanreading.com/Layout/Prototype/CP8705/CP8705.htm . In it the person explains what resistors to cut and make the lights brighter, what happened the PC board is a bad design and they doubled up the the resistance for the leds.
I hope this helps, if you have any more questions, please ask.
Frank:
Finally the lights turn on!!!, the problem was when a friend of mine reprogram the decoder for change the address for DCC , the programing they affected the CV of Dual function of decoder, I tried resetting it ( of course momntary i remove the harness and connect for dcc) and again i install the harness and the Lights operates with normal shiny!!!.
Maybe in a near future i will follow the instructions to intensify the dicth lights of engine on site that you send
Toantiuh
thank you for your reply. I am glad to hear that it all worked out for you. You brought up an interesting item, by re-programming the decoder to turn on the lights.
Thank you